All posts in "Notebook"

According to my calculations it’s now 2014. Of course I’ve made my standard New Year Resolution: “I resolve to keep no New Year Resolutions”. You can keep a logician amused for hours with that one. But I do plan to…

The novel is still ‘nearing completion’; almost all the remaining text is drafted, but the pieces aren’t necessarily (to quote a well-known comedian) in the right order. Shuffling the pack is quite entertaining. Progress with this minimum opus has…

When (around the middle of August) the manuscript of the comic ‘Ruritanian’ novel hit the 75,000 word mark, roughly 10,000 from the end, I decided to stop and carry out second-draft revisions of the 90%-completed work. It was an unconventional…

Almost as soon as I’d written my July notebook entry the weather turned hot, dry and sunny. Britain has enjoyed the best July weather for seven years – a heat wave, which ended a week or so ago (I’m writing…

A return to typically British summer weather, dripping and misty, has encouraged me to stay at my desk writing. The novel with the eighteenth century setting has gone on to the back burner, though I’ve done more research for it,…

The sun is shining! It hasn’t rained for four whole days! Even the bitter east wind has gone! Must be global warming. Now we’ve reached the fourth of June, the may-blossom is starting to appear. We might see a real…

There are definite signs of spring. Flowers bloom, birds sing, rain falls… and I’m writing. One of my new short stories is among the dozen selected to appear in an anthology to be published by the Belper Arts Festival…

Months have passed since I produced a notebook entry. There are excuses: some of the time I’ve been ill; some of the time I’ve been dealing with unwell friends and family, looking after them and doing their shopping and ferrying…